A prime seat at the Beijing Olympics, nights out with Oxford friends, and a mentor at the heart of the British establishment – this is the gilded lifestyle of the son of the ousted Chinese Communist party leader linked to the death of a British businessman.

These pictures shine new light on the links between Bo Guagua and his Oxford contemporaries, several of whom are now on their way to positions of power and influence within some of the world’s leading corporations.

For Bo Guagua, 24, being the scion of one of China’s most powerful couples was not only an opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life – it also allowed him to build a network of friends with an eye to future business ventures in his homeland’s vast and lucrative markets.

Among his contacts was a key figure in Britain’s modern political Establishment - Lord Powell of Bayswater, a former private secretary to both Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Since leaving the civil service, Lord Powell, whose brother, Jonathan, was Tony Blair’s chief of staff, has cultivated strong links with Chinese businessmen and political leaders.

As one Chinese businessman who knows Bo Guagua well said yesterday: “He wants to make a billion dollars and be politically important.”

But Bo Guagua and his parents now face a very uncertain future. His mother, Gu Kailai, languishes in detention following her arrest last Tuesday on suspicion of the murder of Neil Heywood, her husband Bo Xilai’s close business associate. It was initially claimed that Mr Heywood had died of alcohol poisoning in a hotel room the city of Chongqing last November, but the Chinese government now says Mrs Gu is “highly suspected” of having murdered him following a “conflict over economic interests”.

Bo Xilai himself has been removed from his position on the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo and Central Committee, and faces political and personal ruin.

As well as sparking China’s biggest political crisis in decades, the couple’s downfall has brought attention to the wealth and influence they garnered at home and abroad.

It comes at the end of a week of dramatic twists which have seen new revelations about the extent of Mr Heywood’s influence in China, before an apparent rift with Mrs Gu culminated in his death and fears for the safety of his widow Wang Lulu and their two children.

Taken before Mr Heywood’s death, these pictures indicate that Bo Guagua spent much of his time at university acquiring a coterie of friends and contacts whose future careers could prove invaluable to his family’s business interests.

Though the party’s ideology dictates that its leaders live a humble life, with Mr Bo supposedly paid a salary of £300 a month, the wealth they actually acquired through the lucrative business dealings arranged by the likes of Mr Heywood allowed their son access to the best education the West has to offer.

At the age of 12, Bo Guagua was sent by his parents to Papplewick prep school, near Ascot, and then on to Harrow – where the fees are £10,000 a term. The school had been 41-year-old Mr Heywood’s alma mater, and he told friends he had helped the boy secure his place there.

In 2006, by which time his father had risen to become China’s commerce minister, Bo Guagua went to Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College.

He is now a graduate student at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he has been studying public policy and from where US officials smuggled him into hiding last Thursday night.

At Harvard he became known for his consummate networking skills, helping organise a “China Trek” for Kennedy students last year, where they met senior Politburo dignitaries.

The party visited Chongqing, where Bo Xilai was then head of the Communist Party, and were surprised to be greeted by a police motorcade.

“Everyone knew [Bo Guagua] was somebody important because of the meetings he arranged and also the long police escort,” a classmate said.

With his mother now facing a death sentence if found guilty of Mr Heywood’s murder and his father stripped of political power, Bo Bo Guagua is now expected to apply for asylum in America.

The future must have looked very different in May 2008, when he posed for photographs with a group of five friends from Oxford.

With him was Lawrence Barclay, 24, an Old Etonian now working as a consultant for the Monitor Group, a multinational management consulting firm with a reputation for secrecy over its clients, which carried out work for the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi before his overthrow last year.

Two years after the picture was taken Miss Lamb, 24, who studied Chinese at Oxford, began a six-month stint at the British Embassy in Beijing, working on projects to boost trade links between Britain and China.

She now works for JP Morgan, which has significant investments throughout China.

Mr Robinson, 23, who also studied Chinese, and Lara Adamson, 25, are now trainee solicitors with major law firms.

Terry Oh, a South Korean who was with Bo Bo Guagua at Harrow, is an aspiring male model and also works as an associate for Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, which has extensive interests in south east Asia.

Bo Guagua and Mr Oh attended the 2008 Beijing Olympics together, enjoying the benefit of prestigious seats at the opening ceremony of the games.

They travelled to China again in July last year, visiting the Great Wall and horse riding together in the countryside around Chongqing, the city ruled by Bo Guagua’s father until his downfall.

His academic achievements were less than glittering. He was reportedly “rusticated”, or suspended, from Balliol for not studying hard enough and had to return later to complete his degree.

He did, however, impress his fellow students when he organised a ball which included a display by Shaolin temple monks and later managed to arrange for Jackie Chan, the Hong Kong-born film star, to address the Oxford Union.

While at Harrow and Oxford university Bo Guagua was mentored by Lord Powell, who is said to have been a “father figure” to the young man. The peer, a president of the China-Britain Business Council who has travelled extensively in the region, declined to elaborate but told The Sunday Telegraph: “I know the boy through his father and saw him from time to time when he was studying at Oxford.”

Intriguingly, given rumours that Mr Heywood had links with MI6, Lord Powell is also on the board of Diligence, an intelligence firm set up in 2000 by former members of the British and American secret services, including Nick Day, a former MI5 official. The chairman of the board is William Webster, the former director of the CIA and the FBI.

Mr Heywood is known to have been in the southwestern city of Chongqing last June, when Bo Xilai hosted celebrations as party secretary, and where guests at one event included Lord Powell. A day later, Bo Xilai entertained Lord Mandelson at a banquet in the city.

The arrest of Bo Guagua’s mother has also shone a spotlight on her business activities over the past two decades, and in particular her links to Britain. It has now emerged that Mrs Gu stands accused by her husband’s former police chief, Wang Lijun, of illegally transferring hundreds of millions of dollars abroad.

It was Mr Wang who had already accused Mrs Gu of poisoning Mr Heywood. In his capacity as a “Bai Shoutao” – literally a “white glove” – Mr Heywood had brokered a series of secretive business deals for Mr Bo, who as a powerful politician was not supposed to get his hands dirty with commercial ventures.

The Sunday Telegraph has now traced some of Mrs Gu’s own business activities to an anonymous, run-down building a stone’s throw from Bournemouth beach. It was here, in December 2000, she first tried establish a commercial base in the UK.

Mrs Gu had already achieved a reputation as a legal high-flier when, in 1997, she successfully represented a number of Chinese companies in a $1 million bankruptcy dispute with an American firm.

Three years later came her move into Britain, where she teamed up with a French architect called Patrick Devillers. Mr Devillers, who is understood to be married to a Chinese woman, agreed to set up a company with Mrs Gu.

The move coincided with the enrolment of her son at Papplewick school, which charges fees of around £22,400 year. There is now speculation that Mrs Gu may have set up firms in Britain in order to channel the money Mr Heywood was making for her and her husband in China.

Indeed, an article last Wednesday in the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper – though ostensibly about the wider issue of corruption – was widely interpreted as a further attack on Mr Bo and others like him. It pointedly stated: “Some people had secretly gained dual citizenship and foreign identities, transferred money and goods overseas, used relatives, friends and mistresses to conceal their wealth.”

Mrs Gu and Mr Devillers established their firm, called Adad Ltd, at a business park in Poole, with a working capital of just £1,000. It described itself in the records of Companies House as offering “service activities” for other companies, with Mr Devillers and Mrs Gu – using her business name of Horus Kai – as its sole directors.

Adad appears to have operated as no more than a “shell” company, dissolving in 2003 having filed no accounts during its three years of operation, and could have provided a front for the movement of funds from China.

Mrs Gu and Mr Devillers gave their residential address as the top floor terrace apartment of Keystone House, six miles away in Bournemouth. Office workers in the building were surprised that a woman with Mrs Gu’s wealth and connections could have lived in the flat, as it is usually rented by students from Bournemouth University looking for cheap accommodation.

Following the dissolution of Adad, the trail of Mrs Gu’s affairs becomes even more complex.

By 2006 Mr Devillers, who also occupied a smart apartment in a residential block in Earl’s Court, west London, had moved to Beijing, where it is thought he continued to pursue their joint business interests.

He registered the Chinese arm of their operations through the Beijing Angdao Law Firm, based at a smart address in an apartment complex overlooking the Chinese capital’s Olympic Park and iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium.

Mr Devillers is thought to have moved back to France in 2008. Angdao Law’s boss, who gave his name only as Mr Li and described himself as friend of Mr Devillers, said: “He no longer works here, or visits. I think he went back to France.”

In the meantime, Mrs Gu continued to pursue her work through Angdao Law, introducing foreign business clients to China’s senior party leaders and further enriching herself and her husband.

Mr Heywood met Mr Bo in the 1990s after writing to him to ask for help pursuing business opportunities in China and promising to bring foreign investment to Chongqing.

He soon became part of Bo Xilai’s trusted inner circle and as such managed to broker a deal between the Chinese authorities and the British government for the release of Matthew Bennett, a senior executive with Aston Martin, the luxury car manufacturer, who had been prevented from leaving the country for almost seven months in 2007 following a trade dispute.

The Old Harrovian is understood to have grown concerned about his safety after a dispute with Mrs Gu last year, in which she suspected that he was preparing to reveal details of the family’s business activities. Shortly before his death, Mr Heywood is thought to have handed the dossier to his British lawyer as his “insurance policy”, in case the worst should happen to him. Its actual contents – along with the identity of the lawyer – remains a mystery. But one thing is in little doubt - such an act would have been regarded as a gross betrayal.